Cons
That 4-inch screen is starting to feel small. No significant new hardware features.

Bottom Line

The colorful, plastic iPhone 5c is a welcome upgrade for existing iPhone 4 and 4S owners, and a great introduction to Apple's awesome app platform at a nice price. It's the best $99 phone you'll find on Verizon Wireless, but otherwise, there's not much new to see here.

For voice calls, both the iPhone 5 and 5c are fine, and neither is great. The 5c's earpiece went a bit louder, which was unexpected. Both phones sound identical through the microphone, with the same middling external noise rejection. I heard some static on one of the iPhone 5 test calls, which makes me think reception is playing a role there, too.

It became obvious that call quality was limited by the network when we compared a standard Verizon voice call to Apple's FaceTime Audio, which uses the data network. On Verizon's network, voices sounded clipped and sometimes computerized. On a FaceTime Audio call over our Wi-Fi network, voices became much richer; we heard the person on the other end breathing and typing on a keyboard as he was talking.

On the other hand, FaceTime Audio requires a data connection with decent quality of service, which the carriers don't currently guarantee. In a park in midtown Manhattan with three circles of LTE signal, we were able to connect voice calls but couldn't get FaceTime to work because the data connection was too slow and saturated.

Apple also upgraded the battery in the iPhone 5c, though the company doesn't specify how; iFixit found that the unit is now 1,580mAh instead of 1,440mAh. The iPhone 5 on Verizon Wireless scored 9 hours, 44 minutes of 3G talk time, although that was running iOS 6, not iOS 7. We're still doing battery testing and will update this review as soon as we have those results. Like the iPhone 5 and 5s, the 5c also uses Apple's new Lightning connector, so if you're upgrading from an older iPhone 4 or 4S, don't forget you'll need to replace compatible accessories. Apple includes its surprisingly good-sounding EarPod earbuds in the box.

Software, Multimedia, and ConclusionsThe iPhone 5c runs iOS 7, which is a dramatically redesigned operating system that marks the first major change in the platform since its introduction in 2007. For more on that, read our full iOS 7 review; suffice to say here that it's slick, fast, and picks up a lot of what makes Android phones great these days, while retaining its Apple core. It will also let you take advantage of all of the 900,000+ third-party apps in Apple's App Store, and you now get the iWork productivity suite (including Pages, Numbers, and Keynote), iPhoto, and iMovie for free, in addition to iBooks. Go download 'em, because they're all pretty good. In fact, iOS 7 prompts you to download them all in one shot the first time you hit the App Store on the phone.

iPhones have always been great multimedia devices, and the iPhone 5c is no exception. The one key difference is that the 1.2-megapixel front-facing camera now snaps photos with larger pixels, and the backlight illumination sensor is improved. In testing, this results in brighter, crisper photos, especially outdoors. Recorded 720p videos from the front-facing camera are still a little weak, though, with blown out highlights. The rear camera is identical to the one in the iPhone 5, which means you'll get stellar outdoor shots, middling to good indoor shots in low light (for a cell phone camera at least), and fast performance, the latter partially thanks to upgrades in the iOS 7 Camera app.

So all this leaves us with a question: Exactly who is the iPhone 5c for? On the one hand, it's tough to get excited about, since it's basically last year's iPhone in a colorful case. The real action, hardware-wise, is happening with the iPhone 5s. But Apple is clearly angling for new customers looking for a new phone at the $100 price point. To these folks, the iPhone 5c will be new, and it won't matter so much what's underneath the surface. The other thing is that the iPhone 5 hardware still holds up well. The faster CPU, quick-acting fingerprint sensor, and improved camera in the 5s are considerable upgrades, but the iPhone 5c is no worse for not having them, and it's half the price.

I'll leave the iPhone 5c's potential attractiveness to developing markets to the appropriate financial analysts, and just say instead that for our purposes here in the U.S., the iPhone 5c is a fine phone if you've got $100 burning a hole in your pocket and need a new phone on Verizon. The Android-powered Motorola Droid Mini is a similarly sized option, with a sharper 720p 4.3-inch display and superior voice activation capabilities, while the HTC One and Moto X are both also worth a close look for their larger 4.7-inch displays that are still relatively easy to hold single-handedly. The Galaxy S4 remains our top pick, thanks to its awesome 5-inch 1080p display and fast quad-core processor.

Finally, if you've got $199 instead of $99, we'd strongly advise getting the iPhone 5s instead of a bump to 32GB. While 16GB can get tight with today's large games and 1080p video, iCloud can help you manage that (iCloud can also help you back up the precious data on your iPhone), and you'll get the best hardware Apple has to offer today. But if you want to run iOS apps on an iPhone, and you don't need the absolute latest and greatest hardware, the iPhone 5c is an ideal choice at just $99 up front.

Jamie Lendino is the managing editor for consumer electronics and mobile at PCMag.com and has written for the site and print magazine since 2005. Previously, Jamie was the Editor In Chief of Smart Device Central,...

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